'Gladiator' leads Oscars with 12 nominations

By RUSSELL BAILLIE entertainment editor

New Zealand-born actor Russell Crowe yesterday got the thumbs-up from Hollywood's Emperor Oscar - his second Academy Award nomination in two years.

This time he's the favourite to take away the prize.

A contender last year for The Insider, Crowe was yesterday nominated for his performance in Gladiator, one of 12 nominations the Roman epic received. These include best picture and director, making it this year's leading contestant.

Another period film with multiple fight scenes, the martial arts epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, is close behind with 10 nominations. Although these include best picture, best director and best foreign language film, there are no nominations for its Chinese cast.

The movie, a hit in the West despite subtitles in Mandarin, brings an international flavour to the nominations.

This is enhanced by nods for Australian actor Geoffrey Rush (a past winner for Shine) in Quills, French actress Juliette Binoche for Chocolat, Spanish actor Javier Bardem for Before Night Falls, and three nominations for British film Billy Elliot.

However, Americans dominate the best actress category, with Julia Roberts' nomination for Erin Brockovich making her the early favourite.

Steven Soderbergh is twice nominated for best director, for Erin Brockovich and Traffic, his film about America's "war on drugs" which opens in New Zealand next month. Both films figure with Gladiator, Crouching Tiger ... and the romance Chocolat in the best picture category.

Soderbergh's double directing nomination is the first since 1938, when Michael Curtiz was nominated for Angels With Dirty Faces and Four Daughters.

The other director nominees are Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot), Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger ... ) and Ridley Scott (Gladiator).

Crowe's competitors for best actor are Bardem (for his performance as Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas in Before Night Falls), Oscar regular Tom Hanks (as a modern-day Robinson Crusoe in Cast Away), Ed Harris (who plays abstract painter Jackson Pollock in the biopic Pollock) and Rush (as the asylum-bound Marquis de Sade in Quills).

Alongside Roberts and Binoche in the best actress nominations are Joan Allen (as a vice-presidential candidate in The Contender), former Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn (for her role as a drug addict in Requiem for a Dream) and Laura Linney (as a sister coping with her prodigal brother in You Can Count On Me).

Up for best supporting actor are Benicio Del Toro (a Mexican drug cop in Traffic), Joaquin Phoenix (the pretender to the throne in Gladiator), Jeff Bridges (a flamboyant president in The Contender), Willem Dafoe (as Nosferatu in Shadow of the Vampire) and Albert Finney (as the title character's legal mentor in Erin Brockovich).

For supporting actress, the nominees are past winner Judi Dench (a cranky grandmother in Chocolat), Julie Walters (as the ballet teacher in Billy Elliot), Marcia Gay Harden (the painter's wife in Pollock), and Kate Hudson and Frances McDormand (for their respective roles as groupie and mother in 70s rock movie Almost Famous).

The Oscars will be presented at a ceremony hosted by Steve Martin, on Monday March 25 (Tuesday, March 26, New Zealand time). TV3 will broadcast delayed coverage of the whole event that evening.